Kari KrishnamurthyTruecaller, the Stockholm-born brand founded in 2009 by Alan Mamedi and Nami Zarringhalam that started life as a caller-identification offering is changing colours as it turns 8. And the company has identified India as a pilot market to roll out the brand refresh since it is also its largest user base market. Truecaller that counts Sequoia Capital, Atomico and Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers as its investors have a total user base of 250 million plus, of which India contributes 150 million plus users.

In 2014, it launched the first ever brand campaign for the India market featuring actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui which had spoken of how consumers can 'take the right call' by deploying the caller identification app on their mobile phone. The brand has come a long way as it announces its transformation in India today.

In an exclusive chat with Brand Equity, Kari Krishnamurthy, VP brand and strategy, Truecaller ahead of the launch shared the reasons for the brand refresh, “While businesses have had to refresh their brands vision and mission due to product-related challenges, business take-overs or brand-inertia (where users have stopped using or are not proud of using), in our case we needed a brand refresh as we are not a tech or app product anymore.” We are becoming a consumer brand, he adds. While we remain committed to solve the bigger communication problem of caller ID and spam blocking, we are also going to introduce many more services which will make us a platform that enables safer and efficient communication for over 250 million users and more.

What's the big change?

The logo and the brand identity to begin. The creative agency BBH has been involved in the brand concept, identity, creating of new logotype, iconography, brand tonality, brand expression. At a more strategic level, the core offering would change with a clutch of features being added to the interface. The brand is getting ready to transition from just an app to identify the phone callers to a full-fledged platform.

The new logo.

How is it happening?

This is being achieved through a host of features like Truecaller going platform agnostic to start with and launching the app for iOS and web platform as well. In addition, it is also getting into carrier deals: starting with Airtel to launch a first of its kind subscription-based offering ‘Airtel Truecaller ID’ which would allow even non-data users using feature phones to identify the callers.

In another first of its kind for the brand, it is entering a space beyond the dialer experience, wherein it has put its mobile identity platform in collaboration with ICICI Bank to build a financial service. The mobile payment service ‘Truecaller Pay’ would let the users carry out prepaid and postpaid recharges as well as send or receive money using any Unified Payments Interface (UPI) supported the bank.

Another useful feature being introduced would allow checking the SMS senders and thus be able to filter out all spam messages. As per reports, spam SMS account for approximately 1.2 trillion messages each year.​In addition, as per sources, Truecaller is also aligning with Google to launch video calling, which would be rolled out in the future.